Talk:Bradford's law

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Untitled[edit]

I would argue that we do know why Zipf's law works, although the details may vary in a specific instance. Essentially Zipf applies in any system where "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." In the instance of the distribution of attention (the popular "long tail"), it has to do with the fact that the probability of my giving attention to resource X goes up with your attention to resource X.

What I can't tell from this article about Bradford is whether it really is just an example of Zipf in action. How does Bradford define "core"? Is it based on citation? Then I'd say Bradford is strictly a corollary of Zipf... The prevoious unsigned comment was added by user 128.62.100.249 on Sept 12, 2006.

more[edit]

Since this article needs to list the many related laws and link to their articles. I'm about to add them, but I don't have time now to explain the relationships. There is considerable confusion between them in non-technical use, and considerable debate in information science circles. My rule of thumb is to use whichever one a person can best understand, or is easier to compute.

As for the specific comment above, the beauty of this law is that it works regardless of the size of the set--one can use the top 10 or the top 100, and the relationship holds. DGG 18:29, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Intro/heading[edit]

This section reads like a short essay for library science class, or maybe a few disparate paragraphs clipped from a longer one. Further, assertions like that Nature and Science comprise the entirety of hard science should really be backed up with cites. FOR SHAME 76.25.144.15 (talk) 15:39, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]